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To everyone who joined these forums at some point, and got discouraged by the negativity and left after a while (or even got literally scared off): I'm sorry.

I wasn't good enough at encouraging people to be kinder, and removing people who refuse to be kind. Encouraging people is hard, and removing people creates conflict, and I hate conflict... so that's why I wasn't better at it.

I was a very, very sensitive teen. The atmosphere of this forum as it is now, if it had existed in 1996, would probably have upset me far more than it would have helped.

I can handle quite a lot of negativity and even abuse now, but that isn't the point. I want to help people. I want to help the people who need it the most, and I want to help people like the 1996 version of me.

I'm still figuring out the best way to do that, but as it is now, these forums are doing more harm than good, and I can't keep running them.

Thank you to the few people who have tried to understand my point of view so far. I really, really appreciate you guys. You are beautiful people.

Everyone else: If after everything I've said so far, you still don't understand my motivations, I think it's unlikely that you will. We're just too different. Maybe someday in the future it might make sense, but until then, there's no point in arguing about it. I don't have the time or the energy for arguing anymore. I will focus my time and energy on people who support me, and those who need help.

-SoulRiser

The forums are mostly read-only and are in a maintenance/testing phase, before being permanently archived. Please use this time to get the contact details of people you'd like to keep in touch with. Send me a message if you'd like to keep in touch with me & Steve.

Please do not make a mirror copy of the forums in their current state - things will still change, and some people have requested to be able to edit or delete some of their personal info.

My book is intended to be a brief and highly accessible encyclopedia of educational philosophy.

When reading about Montessori school in particular it is infuriating. It all sounds like fluff. Waldorf school, same problem, but I haven't tried to read too much about them yet.

With the exception of Sudbury it seems that anybody who wants to tear down the walls of Education more typically moves the walls around. They then try to justify their structure sounding almost exactly like School itself when doing so. It's going to be very hard to be fair and objective when defining these types of schools.

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

Agile Learning Centers, based on democratic schools but with less of a focus on meetings and rulebooks and with the addition of some practices from Agile software development, is another one.

And there are various kinds of Sudbury-inspired and other democratic schools around where students are given equal power to make decisions with staff, and generally there is freedom to do anything during the day as long as it fits with democratically-decided rules. All classes are optional and with Sudbury, only provided when students explicitly ask for them. There are some videos about one Sudbury School, Hudson Valley, at http://sudburyschool.com/

And, a lot of unschoolers and homeschoolers in general also develop smaller local co-ops, that can offer voluntary classes, meetup opportunities etc.

And I'm working on an online version of these kinds of programs called Catalyst Learning Network, with even more of an emphasis on helping people leave school when their parents aren't so into homeschooling and unschooling.

The shared idea with all of these models is to really start from scratch with the needs of learners (and their families) without the main starting point being the things traditionally done in school. I think if many more people learn about these models and start implementing more of them, it could open up a lot of options for people stuck in traditional school.

I've researched all of this a lot but I think the key is transforming the information and examples into the most accessible formats possible; I'm thinking YouTube videos and yeah maybe some kind of book could be good but it has to get people's attention and get them from "School is all I know" to at least potentially saying "I'm ready to do something new tomorrow! And I have a plan to do so!" even though that is all too rare to hear.

Also there's a fair amount of information about alternatives on Peter Gray's site Alternatives to School, especially in the many many blog posts there about various things people are doing.

I don't want to give the misimpression that I actually have time to devote to this. In the few moments I get ever to work on this I mostly realize how much ACTUAL research I need to do. Talking about it is to invite awesome suggestions like yours xcriteria.

Actually I could only think of you when selling the idea to various people (that's metaphorical selling) by saying the book is supposed to be designed as a catalyst, ha!

I want to throw enough interesting and unexpected stuff around without bewildering or inundating. I want to ignite people's imagination so that THEY will begin to form their own opinions.

I might actually be able to get help from a local professor. Allen Bruce Manning in 1984, I think, wrote a PhD thesis studying the economic/job trends of illiterates. Turns out many entrepraneurs and corporate higher ups are actually illiterate, and illiterates make more obeient employees, so really some interesting stuff. If I couls just get my hands on those 300+ pages.

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!

One chapter is called "Private School" where I explain that private schools are not a type of school, but that they are simply run by a non-government entity. Depending on local laws they sometimes have great freedom to choose educational content and methods. Whether they exercise that freedom is a matter od choice.

Then one quote I've picked out is from Noam Chomsky about how California's education system is beimg destroyed by being privitized for the rich.

I jusyt thought of a quote from boyinaband about how, measuring success of private school graduates messes up the data because parents who are wealthy enough and thoughtful enough to send their kids there will probably make more money anyway.

The structure as planned so far is brief overviews of ideas like "Reading", "the Real World", "getting a job", and explained and commented on by selected quotes on the topics from major critics when possible, or less productive ones like boyinaband, Allen Bruce Manning, or especially obscure ones like Alexander Ingles

Purity is to Believe only that which deserves it.Wisdom is to follow only the Opinion which makes the best use of evidence.Excellence is to be mindful of all these things in Living.Follow me on Twitter!